Media Blasted for “Fake News” on Trump's Climate Stance

The establishment media is again being accused of pumping out “fake news,” this time for radically distorting the meaning and context of recent “climate change” comments made by President-elect Donald Trump. In an interview with the far-left New York Times (shown), Trump made clear that he was still skeptical of the increasingly discredited man-made global-warming theory, as well as the United Nations schemes supposedly aimed at stopping the alleged warming. The establishment's propaganda organs, though, dishonestly reported the comments as if the president-elect had betrayed his supporters and come out of the closet as a full-blown global-warming theorist in favor of the very UN “climate” regime he vowed to “cancel” on the campaign trail. In reality, despite expressing more nuance, he did no such thing.

In what critics said was another example of extraordinarily deceptive “reporting” by the establishment's propaganda organs, Trump was alleged to have “moderated” his views on the “climate” issue last week. Multiple misleading news reports and statements from the New York Times, CNN, and many other discredited “media” outlets claimed that Trump had changed or even reversed his position. Some especially ludicrous articles claimed Trump had done a “backflip” or made a “major U-turn” in his position. The fake news pumped out by the establishment was based on a handful of comments that relied on brazenly cherry-picking Trump's remarks in an incredibly dishonest manner.

What started the cascade of “fake” news reports claiming Trump had become a member of what top scientists refer to as the “cult” of global warming was a comment the president-elect made suggesting there may be “some connectivity” between human activity and changes in climate. He also said he had an “open mind” on climate, which everybody should have until seeing all the evidence, and on efforts to rein in alleged “climate change.” Even taken in complete isolation, those comments hardly justified the media celebrations that ensued. But the stream of headlines cheering Trump's alleged “broken promises” and his supposed “backing down” on his “extreme campaign promises” were extremely dishonest.

The problem for the establishment media and the tax-funded alarmist movement is that the comments were hardly indicative of a reversal at all, even out of context.The remarks that accompanied them made it absolutely clear that Trump recognizes the fraud perpetrated by many man-made warming theorists. His comments also showed a solid understanding of the fact that countless scientists disagree with the UN's imploding theory. Finally, his other remarks in the same New York Times interview — and his actions so far, such as his selection of a prominent climate realist to lead the EPA transition team — strongly suggest that Trump does indeed plan on at least reining in the climate hysteria, if not crushing it once and for all as promised throughout the campaign.

Trump next emphasized the fact that Obama's “climate” scheming was destroying the U.S. economy. “You have to understand, our companies are noncompetitive right now,” Trump explained, highlighting the cost. “They’re really largely noncompetitive. About four weeks ago, I started adding a certain little sentence into a lot of my speeches, that we’ve lost 70,000 factories since W. Bush. 70,000. When I first looked at the number, I said: That must be a typo. It can’t be 70, you can’t have 70,000, you wouldn’t think you have 70,000 factories here. And it wasn’t a typo, it’s right. We’ve lost 70,000 factories. We’re not a competitive nation with other nations anymore. We have to make ourselves competitive. We’re not competitive for a lot of reasons.”

He also fingered Obama and his pseudo-treaties with foreign governments and dictators as a leading cause of that decline. “That’s becoming more and more of the reason. Because a lot of these countries that we do business with, they make deals with our president, or whoever, and then they don’t adhere to the deals, you know that,” Trump said. “And it’s much less expensive for their companies to produce products. So I’m going to be studying that very hard, and I think I have a very big voice in it. And I think my voice is listened to, especially by people that don’t believe in it. And we’ll let you know.” And with that, the Times and other establishment sources were practically claiming that Trump had joined their cult and betrayed his supporters.

In the real world, more than a few climate skeptics and realists explained that Trump's comments were largely consistent with the skeptic viewpoint he expressed on the campaign trail, if softer and more nuanced in the face of a hostile and dishonest audience. “Trump’s climate science view that there is some connectivity between humans and climate is squarely a skeptical climate view,” explained David Rothbard, who leads the market-oriented environmentalist group CFACT. “Trump demonstrated a detailed knowledge of the Climategate scandal.” Rothbard noted that there would be tremendous pressure on Trump from the media, the warmists, and particularly the “carbon carpetbaggers planning to rake in billions from taxpayer grants and subsidies.” Hopefully, though, Trump will keep his open mind on the issue, and encourage others to do the same. “Shame on the media for trying to pull a fast one and twist this story for political ends,” the CFACT chief concluded in an e-mail sent to supporters.

Heartland Institute President Joe Bast made similar remarks after reviewing the entire transcript of the interview. “This is reassuring,” said Bast, who leads the liberty-minded non-profit that has done massive amounts of important work on climate science. “The Left wants to drive wedges between Trump and his base by spinning anything he says as retreating from campaign promises. But expressing nuance and avoiding confrontation with determined foes who buy ink by the barrel is not retreating.”

In a piece picked up by the Drudge Report, ClimateDepot.com editor Marc Morano, who produced the documentary Climate Hustle, acknowledged that Trump's remarks were not as hardcore as his campaign rhetoric. But they hardly justified the media's bogus claims. “Trump’s claim to have an open mind on U.S. climate policy and his comment that ´I’m going to take a look at´ withdrawing from the UN Paris agreement are more nuanced than his previous blunt statements that the U.S. will cancel the UN agreement,” Morano explained. “But those comments in the context of the interview are hardly a flip-flop or major signal of changing views on the issue.”

Climate Depot also included a number of quotes from leading scientists celebrating Trump's victory and what it might mean for restoring honesty in science. “Trump’s victory is very promising,” exclaimed Norwegian Astrophysicist Prof. Jan-Erik Solheim from the University of Tromso. “We can get real science back in the field.” Prominent Swedish geologist Dr. Nils Axel Morner of Stockholm University echoed the sentiment: “We have a benefit from Trump’s victory: We scientists may see a liberation from this unscientific closing of journals,” said Morner, perhaps the world's top expert on sea levels and a former UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) expert reviewer. Numerous others agreed.

Trump's chief of staff later confirmed that Trump was still a climate skeptic, if not a realist. “As far as this issue on climate change, the only thing he was saying after being asked a few questions about it was, look, he’ll have an open mind about it. But he has his default position which, most of it is a bunch of bunk,” said Reince Priebus in an interview with Fox News Sunday. “But he’ll have an open mind and listen to people.”

Ironically, even climate alarmists on the ultra-left end of the spectrum recognized the establishment media's deceptive reporting on Trump's comments, despite blaming it on Trump. “Don’t believe Donald Trump: He spun climate denial to The New York Times, and a lot of people fell for it,” wrote fringe left-wing activist Rebecca Leber on the alarmist website Grist.org in a piece that was then re-published by the larger far-left, pro-pedophile outlet Salon.com. “If you look at what he said in context, you'll see Donald Trump hasn’t changed his mind on anything.” Despite mistakenly blaming the deception on Trump (and then pointing out that the deception came from the media ignoring the context), the message was clear.

Trump's comments on the campaign trail were indeed more forceful than his comments to the “failing” Times, as he previously referred to the newspaper (which famously declared that Fidel Castro was definitely not a communist before the lie became impossible to continue). For instance, Trump once stated that the climate hoax was invented by the communist dictatorship in Beijing to undermine U.S. manufacturing. “This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bulls*** [expletive removed] has got to stop,” Trump wrote in 2014. “Our planet is freezing, record low temps,and our GW scientists are stuck in ice.” On the campaign trail, Trump also vowed to “cancel” the Paris Agreement, undo Obama's “climate” regulations, and defund the UN “climate” bureaucracy (as is already required by federal law).

Trump has also been accused of walking back other pledges. Among the most significant, perhaps, was the prosecution of Hillary Clinton for a broad range of crimes. On the campaign trail, Trump was clear: Clinton should be brought to justice for serious crimes that would have landed any other person in prison. After his electoral victory, though, he appears to have changed his tune, telling reporters he was not interested in hurting Clinton — and even claiming that Americans should be thankful for Clinton's “service” to the country. Trump supporters counter that prosecuting criminals at the federal level is actually a job for the attorney general and the Justice Department, not Trump.

It is certainly understandable for Trump supporters to express disillusionment with Trump's softening stance on exposing the man-made global-warming hoax and crushing the UN climate regime that the hoax theory underpins. However, his skeptical comments in the interview were so distorted and blown so far out of proportion that labeling the establishment's propaganda “fake news” is justified in this case. Whether Trump will truly live up to all his fiery campaign pledges remains to be seen. But with the overwhelming majority of Americans rejecting the theory in polls, public pressure on Congress and the new administration will undoubtedly continue, helping to rein in, expose, and eventually destroy the UN's totalitarian “climate” regime.

Photo of President-elect Trump meeting with New York Times senior staffers, January 22, 2016: AP Images

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, was at the UN climate summit in Paris. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.

Thank you for joining the discussion at The New American. We value our readers and encourage their participation, but in order to ensure a positive experience for our readership, we have a few guidelines for commenting on articles. If your post does not follow our policy, it will be deleted.

No profanity, racial slurs, direct threats, or threatening language.

No product advertisements.

Please post comments in English.

Please keep your comments on topic with the article. If you wish to comment on another subject, you may search for a relevant article and join or start a discussion there.

Comments that we consider abusive, spammy, off-topic, or harassing will be removed.

If our filtering system detects that you may have violated our policy, your comment will be placed in a queue for moderation. It will then be either approved or deleted. Once your comment is approved, it will then be viewable on the discussion thread.

If you need to report a comment, please flag it and it will be reviewed. Thank you again for being a valued reader of The New American.